BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded 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".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
