British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
