British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."