British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
