British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."