British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
