British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
