BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
