British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
