British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
