British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
