British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
