British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with 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 follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."