BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
