BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme 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 accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
