British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
