British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
