British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
