BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
