British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
