British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
