British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."