British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
