British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child 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 found 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 accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
