British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
