BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
