BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
