BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."