BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
