BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
