BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
