British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
