British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
