British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
