British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance 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 factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."