BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
