BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
