British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
