British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
