British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement 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 regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
