BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
