British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
