BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."