BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
