British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
