British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child 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 determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions 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 regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
