British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."