BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
