BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
