BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions 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 reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
