🔗 Share this article British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom. An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading". The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy". The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions. "Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said. 'Potential to Undermine Credibility' The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive. "This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided. "Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster. "This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict." The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness. A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards. "We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."