British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
