British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
