BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
