British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies 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 complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
