British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
