BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions 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 reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
