British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
