British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."