BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
