BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
