British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
