British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
