British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
