BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed 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The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
