British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
