British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
