British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
