BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 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 sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
