BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."