BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."