BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably 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 viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
