British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
