British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
