British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary 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 accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
