British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
