British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
