BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
