British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
