British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
