British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
