British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions 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 aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
