British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
