BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight 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 comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
