BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."