British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine 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The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
