British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
