British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement 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 truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
