BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
