BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
