British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
