British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
