British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
