BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
