British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
