British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
