British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
