BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
