British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
