British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
