BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
