BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
