British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."