BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
