British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
