British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
