British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
