BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have 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 British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
