BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
