British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."