BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."