British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."