British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
