British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
