BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
