BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line 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 accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
