British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
