BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
