BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme 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 determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."