BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
