British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."