British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
