🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive". The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy". The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions. "Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read. 'Potential to Damage Credibility' The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate. "This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war." The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness. A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations. "We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."