British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
