British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
