British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
