British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."