BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"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.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
