British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
