British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 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 comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
