BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
