BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results 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 aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
