British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."