British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
