British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
