BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
