British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
