BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
