BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
