BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
