British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
