British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
