British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."