British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
