British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme 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 serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."