British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
