British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."