BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
