British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
