BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
