BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
