British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
