British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
