British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
