British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance 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 accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
