BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
