BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
