British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results 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 aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
