British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme 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 significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
