British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
