British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
