British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
