British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service 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 found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
