British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
