British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."