British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
