British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
