British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
