British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
