British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
