British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
