BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation 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," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
