British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
