British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
