British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."