BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
