British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
