BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
