British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
