British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
