BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
