British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards 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 serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
