British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
