British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
