British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
