BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
