BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
