BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
