British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement 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 statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
