British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
