BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
