British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
