BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled 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 details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."