British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
