British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
