British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"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 wording are confirmed."
