British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
