BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
