British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
