British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
