British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
