BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film 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 accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
