BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
