BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major 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 determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
