British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
