British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed 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 concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
