BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
