🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry 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 earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness". The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions. "Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said. 'Risk to Erode Credibility' The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive. "It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided. "Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC. "This error had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."