British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
