British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."