BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
