British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
