British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
