British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
