BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
