BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."