British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
