British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
