British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance 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 accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
