British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 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 penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
