BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
