British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
