BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
