BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
