BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
