British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
