British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement 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 factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
