BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results 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 corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
