British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
