BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
