British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
