British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."