British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised 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 finalised."