BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
