British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
