British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
