British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found 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 corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
