British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
