British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core 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 risk to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
