British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
