BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
