BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, 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 finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
