British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."