British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
