British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
