British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
