British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
