British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
