British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
