British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
