British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
