British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
