British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
