BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme 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, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
