BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme 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 serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."