British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
