British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
