BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
