British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
