British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
