BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
