BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
