British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
