British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
