BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
