British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
