British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "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 corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
