BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line 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 accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."