British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
