BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares 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 situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
