British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
