British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "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 factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
