British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
