BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
