British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
