British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
