British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation 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 already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
