British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
