BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
