British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
