🔗 Share this article BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom. An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy". The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings. "As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read. 'Risk to Erode Confidence' The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate. "It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared. "Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. "This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza." The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness. A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code. "We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."