British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
