British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
