British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
