BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
