BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
