British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
