British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
