BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
