British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
