BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
