BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
