British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
