BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
