British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."