British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog 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 major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
