BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into 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 significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
