British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
