BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
