BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."