BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
