BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings 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 clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
