British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
