British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
