British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
