British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry 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 already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
