British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
