BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father 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 very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme 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 agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
