British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster'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 serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
