BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
