British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
