British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
