British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
