British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
