British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
