BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
