British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
