British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
