British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
