British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
