British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
