British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."