BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
