BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
