British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, 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 the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
