British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
