BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
