British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme 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 instructed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
