British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
