British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
