British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
