British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."