British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."