British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
