British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
