BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
