British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
