BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
