British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 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 penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
