BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
