BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
