British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."