BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
