BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
