British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, 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 authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
