British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
