British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings 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 Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
