BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
