BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line 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 corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
