British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"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."
