British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public 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The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
