British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
