BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
