BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
