BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
