British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
