British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
