BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
