British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
