British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme 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 were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
