BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
