British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
