British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
