BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
