BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."