British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
