BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
