BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
