BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
