British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects 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 sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
