British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
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 directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."