British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."