British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
