British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film 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 accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
