British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
