British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."