British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
