British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
