British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."