BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."