British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
