BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
