BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
