British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
