British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
