British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, 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.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
