British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
