British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
