BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled 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 factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a evening statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, 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 penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."