British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line 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 truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
