British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
