BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
