British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."