British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
