British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
