BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."