British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
