British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
