BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "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 BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
