British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
