British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
