British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
