British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."