British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
