BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
