British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
