British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
