BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
