British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
