British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement 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 truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."