BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
