British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information 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 broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
