British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
