British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."