British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
