BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
