British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
