BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
