BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
