BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
