British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
