British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."