BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
