British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
