British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
