British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
