BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."