British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
