British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."