British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
