British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
