British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
