British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
