British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
