British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
