British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
