British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
