British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
