BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."