British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."