British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."