BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
