BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
