British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
