British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
