BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
