British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
