British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
