British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."