British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
