British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."