🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate". The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness". Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions. "Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated. 'Risk to Undermine Confidence' The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate. "Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared. "Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster. "This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness. A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."