BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
