British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
