British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
