BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
