BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
