BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"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.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found 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 internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
