BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
