British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards 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 complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
