BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, 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 complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
