British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
