British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
