British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
