British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found 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".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
