British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
