BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed 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 broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
