British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."