British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
