British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
