British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
