British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
