BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
