BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, 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 film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
