British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
