British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
