British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
