British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
