BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
