British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
