British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
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 transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
