British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
