British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC 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 July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
