BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
