British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
