British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
