British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
