BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
