British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
