British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
