British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."