BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."