BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
