British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
