British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
