British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "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 BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
