British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
