British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."