BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
