British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
