BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
