BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
