BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
