BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that audiences 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 familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
