British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
