British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."