British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."