British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson 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 broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
