BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
