British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
