British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."