British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
